Miami’s Hoops Cartel

And there were such loud howls about betrayal, disloyalty, selfishness, revenge and intrigue that it might have impressed even a Shakespearean court.

“I’m going to take my talents to South Beach,” LeBron James told Jim Gray on ESPN’s special — and specially obnoxious — show, “The Decision,” as though he were going on spring break.

It’s always a bad sign when people begin talking about themselves in the third person. “I wanted to do what was best, you know, for LeBron James, what LeBron James was going to do to make him happy,” LeBron James told Michael Wilbon on ESPN after the special.

ESPN’s 28 minutes of contrived suspense over James’s narcissistic announcement that he was going, aptly, to My-Am-Me played like
“The Bachelor,”
without the rose for the winner.

“Kobe Bryant has twice re-signed with the Lakers — no TV special,” said David Israel, an L.A. TV writer who had a renowned sports column at The Washington Star when I had an obscure one about tennis. “Alex Rodriguez got more than twice as much money when he left his first team, Seattle — no TV special. Tom Brady, three Super Bowls in the nation’s most popular sport, quietly re-signs with the Patriots when his contract expires.”

The special was packaged by Gray and James’s agents, with Gray asking lame questions. CNBC reported that Gray was paid by James, a claim the veteran sports broadcaster denies. It drew more than nine million viewers — more than baseball games, home run derbies and even some N.F.L. Monday night games.

The setting of the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich, Conn. — with no interaction between the King and the kid-props — was weird.

“What was up with that?” wondered Israel. “He wanted to show how much he cares about the welfare of the children of hedge fund managers?”

Asked by Wilbon about Cleveland fans burning No. 23 jerseys in the street, James noted that if “you put the shoe on the other foot and the Cavs would have got rid of me at one point, would my family burn down the organization? Of course not. This is a business.”

Photo

Credit
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

James said he did not want to make “an emotional decision.” But it was a personal decision. The kid who grew up poor in Akron without a father — moving 12 times between 5 and 8 — regards his teams as family. So much so that he ruled out bidding teams, like Chicago, that ruled out putting any of his “LeBrontourage” on the payroll.

His decision came after he consulted with his mom and formed a hoops cartel with his pals Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. It’s usually women who get accused of needing to go places (restaurant bathrooms) together.

James wanted to be wooed because he missed any courtship when he was drafted by the pros right out of high school. But the 25-year-old superstar, who tweets as King James and tattooed “Chosen 1” on his back, got lost in the stratosphere of sports marketing advice and wound up with too many people whispering in his ear. He seems to have no idea of the public relations damage he has inflicted on himself.

A sports TV executive I know agreed: “I don’t think he has any concept that people will be rooting against Miami harder than ever. These three players have attempted to hijack the league and said, ‘We’re all good buddies who are going to gang up and go to one team and dictate who wins championships.’ ”

After seven years as the local hero, James should have shown more class than to let the Cleveland owner, coach and fans hear about his defection on TV, broadcasting from cosseted Greenwich to struggling Cleveland.

It is true, as The Washington Post’s Mike Wise put it, that a message to fans from the Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, accusing James of a “cowardly betrayal,” sounded like “the kind of psycho, ex-girlfriend letter that certifies LeBron made the right decision.” But you feel the rabid pain of Gilbert, who was clearly played. He exacted further revenge by dropping the price of a life-size James decal from $99.99 to $17.41, the year Benedict Arnold was born.

In essence, James was acknowledging that he didn’t think he could lead a team — or at least that team — to a championship on his own.

“The King abandoned the throne like Edward VIII, not for love of a latter-day Wallis Simpson, but for fear of failure,” Israel said. “All the bravado has been a pose. He’s not a leader, he’s not an alpha, he’s just a pack animal. In Miami, Dwyane Wade is the alpha dog.”

Israel believes James would have had a better chance to win in Chicago: “These guys don’t fit together on the Heat. It’s kind of like asking Jackson Pollock to finish a painting Picasso started.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 11, 2010, on Page WK8 of the New York edition with the headline: Miami’s Hoops Cartel. Today's Paper|Subscribe